Act of Truth

In Hindu mythology, a ritual action that
is described as being able to neutralize
poison, bring rain, make a river flow
backward, or even compel the gods to
grant one’s wishes. The act of truth
draws its effectiveness from the power
of truth and is usually performed as a
last resort when all other avenues have
been blocked. The act of truth is a conditional statement: the first part is a true
statement about one’s past behavior, the
second part a request for some specific
result (“If I have always given to those
who begged from me, may this fire not
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Act of Truth
burn me”). The rite’s success stems from
the truthfulness of the first condition—
that the power of truth in the condition
actually causes the second part to come
true. One example of the act of truth
being used to compel the gods to grant a
wish occurs in the story of the lovers
Nala and Damayanti. Damayanti
intends to choose Nala as her husband
but finds that four of the gods have
taken Nala’s form, in an effort to foil her.
Damayanti’s act of truth affirms that she
had chosen Nala as her husband and
has never wavered in this choice, and it
then directs the gods to take their true
forms again. The gods take their true
forms, and Nala and Damayanti are
married.
As Sanskritist and Indologist W.
Norman Brown observes, in cases
where the act of truth is successful, the
people making the act of truth have
perfectly fulfilled their social roles,
and this perfection allows them to
make the conditional affirmation so
central to the act of truth. Successful
men have been either great kings,
ascetics, or householders; successful
women have usually been absolutely
faithful to their husbands (fulfilling
one idealized women’s role). One story
tells of a prostitute who affirmed that she
had serviced all of her clients without partiality, thus perfectly fulfilling her particular social role. In any of these cases,
perfection of one’s role is believed to bring
spiritual merit as well as the ability to
unleash it by performing the act of truth.
For further information see W. Norman
Brown, “The Metaphysics of the Truth
Act,” in Mélanges D’Indianisme à la
Mémoire de Louis Renou, 1968.